Have a home improvement project you’d like to build but don’t have the tools or the expertise to do it? Or an idea for some wood-crafted gifts that you’d like to make for friends or family? Chances are Kupuna Shed can help. And you’ll probably hear some good stories and make some good friends along the way.

That is the purpose of Honolulu Kupuna Shed Hawaii, also known as Honolulu Men’s Shed, a workshop that focuses on older adults and encouraging healthy, active lifestyles.

“Our mission is to create a place for seniors … to develop camaraderie,” said Robert Speer, president of Kupuna Shed. “It’s for seniors, in particular men, to get them out of the house and get them to do something that can be enjoyable, creates friendships, share stories and do projects for the community.”

Currently located in a huge warehouse in Honolulu Harbor, Kupuna Shed was launched seven years ago by Glenn Sears, a retired civil engineer and educator who grew up in Hawaii but spent most of his career overseas or on the mainland. After returning to Hawaii a few years ago, he found himself with time and energy and little to do, when his wife, Mary, showed him an article about the Men’s Shed, a concept that started in the late 1990s in Australia in response to the high number of suicides and early deaths among older men.

The idea spread, and there are now about 1,800 men’s sheds in nine countries worldwide, according to the International Mens Sheds Organisation, an umbrella organization. Honolulu’s Kupuna Shed was its first in the U.S., which now has 27 chapters, all loosely organized under the U.S. Men’s Shed Association, whose motto is “shoulder to shoulder.”

“By maintaining a healthy body and mind, becoming a Men’s Shed member provides a safe and sometimes busy environment where men can find many things to do in the atmosphere of true friendship,” says the association’s website.

Research has shown that the Men’s Shed concept has had a positive impact on men’s health through social activities. According to a 2013 study cited in Health Promotion International, a division of Oxford University Press, “Men’s Sheds have a distinct community development philosophy and are thus identified in both policies as an ideal location to address social isolation and positively impact the health and well-being of males who attend.”

Sears said other studies show that “Men’s Shed members live longer, healthier, happier lives than non-shed members.”

Despite its roots as an organization for men, and particularly older men, Kupuna Shed has always accepted adults of all ages and genders. Its current vice president, Coco Urban, is a retired ceramist from Chicago; her father owned a woodworking company in Wisconsin. Since joining Kupuna Shed two years ago with her husband, she’s made several pieces of furniture for their apartment, gained an appreciation for local hardwoods and enjoyed learning about Hawaiian canoes from the Friends of Hokule‘a & Hawai‘iloa, a group that builds and restores traditional vessels at Kupuna Shed.

“It’s a wonderful magic land that you can go lose yourself in,” she said of Kupuna Shed. “It’s away from everything you do on a normal basis.”

She said the men freely offer help and advice, but that she runs into plenty of attitude from them as well. She handles it by showing she can give it as well as take it. “I have a Type-A personality, so I’m direct and get stuff done,” she said. “The guys will point at me and it will be like, ‘What the heck is she doing? What does she think she’s doing?’ But I think in the end the guys get a kick out of me and they’re curious to see how I operate.”

Tim “the Toolman” Taylor of the 1990s TV sitcom “Home Improvement” would have had a field day working with all the tools available at Kupuna Shed, which takes up about a quarter of the warehouse near Pier 20. Drill presses, band saws, sanders, lathes, all in working order, sit ready for use. A $10,000 donation was used to purchase a high-tech table saw that stops “in two nanoseconds” if someone’s fingers touch the blade. “It’s twice caught fingers,” Sears said. “Just took the skin off.”

The shed does occasionally host expert woodworkers to teach members how to use the tools. It’s also planning an extensive outreach program and evening hours. It is currently open four days a week.

All the tools have been donated, so many that the organization can be choosy about what it accepts. Some come from women giving away their deceased husbands’ tools, others come from “old guys who bought a bunch of tools after they retired and thought they would use them, but didn’t,” Sears said.

Members pay annual dues of $100 and are free to work on personal projects. Due to Kupuna Shed’s nonprofit status and its location on state land, they cannot create commercial items, though they do hold holiday sales as fundraisers. “We’re here for community support. We’re not here for you to run your business,” Speer said.

They also work on community projects and will work with other groups that could use their skills. Currently, some members are working on a project for Iolani Palace; another team reconditions abandoned bicycles, giving some to homeless people and selling some on Craigslist to raise funds.

Sears heads up a group that is building picnic tables for elementary schools. “I started them during COVID, when the kids were wearing masks all the time in class, but when they went to the closed-in cafeteria — where they yell and scream and throw germs all over the place — they didn’t have their masks on,” Sears said. “So we started making picnic tables so they could eat outdoors.”

Walt Miyashiro, a retired administrative assistant for Hawaiian Cement, joined Kupuna Shed about five years ago and joined the picnic table project after working on some personal projects, like a swing set for his family and repairs on their stairs. He relocated to a nearby downtown apartment, and now he comes mostly for the friendships he’s formed. That pleases his family immensely.

“They like the idea about fellowship,” he said. “So my brothers, my sisters, my daughters, everybody’s happy for me.”

Miyashiro said he has benefited from a fellow shed member who talked about his prostate surgery. “It was really interesting for me to hear what he went through,” he said. “So now I’m not afraid to have my prostate worked on.”

Benton Lee has built shelves for his house at Kupuna Shed, but his work on the picnic table project has sparked a sense of connection. “Right now, I watch people sit on benches, especially kids,” said Lee, a retired Hyatt Regency Waikiki bartender who’s always good for a story or two.

Lee heard about Kupuna Shed from his sister, who is a member. “I love wood because wood can always be repaired,” said Lee, who also lives in a nearby apartment.

Tom DeCosta, a retired architect, joined the picnic table-building team in July after he finished building his house. “My wife said, ‘You should check out this men’s shed because it’s a group of people, so you’re not working by yourself,” he said. “I like the idea of being on a team with people.”

So far, the team has built about 20 sturdy, colorfully painted picnic benches, using lumber from Lowe’s home improvement store, which gives the group a 50% discount. The project has been so satisfying that DeCosta doesn’t mind what happens to them after his work is done. “Some of them are trashed,” he said, “but these tables are beautiful when they come out.”

Right now, the main concern for the organization is finding a new home. Speer said the group is grateful to the state Department of Transportation Harbors Division for letting it use its current space at minimal cost, but said it might not renew Kupuna Shed’s permit pending future plans for the site. “It’s our No. 1 project this year in the near and intermediate term to find a place to relocate,” Speer said, adding that the shed could use a 3,000- to 4,000-square-foot space.

Anyone offering a possible site can be assured that Kupuna Shed members will find a way to clean it up, as it did with its current home at the harbor. The site was “full of junk” and had a 1,000-square-foot concrete slab in one corner, Sears said, so he turned to Hawaiian Dredging Construction Co., where he had worked decades earlier, to break it up and haul it away. “We used a diamond saw to cut it up into 4-foot squares,” he said. “And even those weighed 800 pounds apiece.”

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Information about Honolulu Kupuna Shed Hawaii can be found at honolulukupunashed.org or email info@honolulukupuna ­shed.org.